The Art of War
by rozzingit
Summary: Bulma decides she needs to get on that. She picks the language Vegeta is most fluent in: battle.
1. Prologue: Reconnaissance

**Reconnaissance:** a preliminary survey to gain information; especially: an exploratory military survey of enemy territory.

* * *

It all started when Bulma ran into the wall.

Well, no, it _really_ started when Vegeta wouldn't freaking _put a shirt on ever_ when he was training, or preparing to train, or after he had trained, AKA _all the time_. Bulma was fairly certain there was no time in Vegeta's day-to-day life that was not pre-training, post-training, or training proper; thus, by Saiyan logic, full clothing was optional 24:7. From the outfits Raditz and Nappa wore to Earth back in the day, Bulma figured that nudity, by and large, was not a concept Saiyans cared much about at _any_ given time.

So it was really her own fault - she _should_ have known better - when she was walking with her dad through their home compound, talking in that bright, energized, incessant sort of way she had when she was on the tip of a breakthrough, and suddenly he was right. There. Or - okay, he clearly wasn't doing it on _purpose_ , he was just walking from room to room, from gravity chamber to kitchen like every other day, but he was doing it without a shirt and only wearing those damn skintight shorts and sneakers. He wasn't even dressed for the gym. Bulma was pretty sure even gyms would ask him to wear a shirt through the front door. So she was there, and then _he_ was there, and then her dad was walking through the door and she was walking decidedly into the wall right _next_ to the door, because where her eyes really were was on Vegeta's ass as he went by. Ironic, considering it was one of the only clothed parts of him.

 _What the fuck_ , she thought. _No, seriously,_ what the fuck.

* * *

And then there was the other day when she ran into him - like, literally _ran into him_ \- on her way out of the kitchen. He had a shirt on, thank God, or rather a full battlesuit or whatever it was he called it, but it was pretty much just as good as being shirtless for all it left to the imagination.

"Watch where you're going, woman," he snapped at her, shoving past to where he was surely about to demolish the contents of her kitchen. Bulma turned to snap at him, what with all the _shoving_ and _woman_ and everything about him that just grinded her gears, except then she saw him _leaning over_ \- no, leaning _down_ \- to open one of the lower cabinets. She glared at the muscled line of his back through his skintight shirt, at the shift of his ass and thighs, and she felt blood rushing to her head and maybe somewhere else in such a way that kind of made her _pissed_ more than anything else.

 _Shit_ , she thought. _I need to get on that monkey dick._

* * *

 **NOTES:** Welcome! This fanfic is being mirrored here from its home on Archive of Our Own. If you prefer reading there, you can look me up as Roz and find it. (Links to my profile there are on my profile here!) AO3 is also where the, ah - eventual uncensored chapters will be. You know how it is.


	2. Attrition Warfare

**Attrition Warfare:** a strategy of wearing down the enemy to the point of collapse through continuous loss of personnel and materiel.

* * *

Bulma was surprised at how many things she started noticing now that she'd noticed him, or been conscious of noticing him, or whatever it - this - was. It was impossible to live in the same house as _anybody_ without learning something about them, but Bulma found the smallest things about him strange and unexpected.

His appetite was no surprise, given her experience with Goku growing up, but Vegeta actually had something resembling table manners; Bulma had the strangest vision of him in a different life, Crown Prince of the Saiyans and having to behave himself for diplomatic dinners. _Surely_ there were diplomatic dinners. Possibly there were only victory dinners after murdering the diplomats.

He woke up earlier than she did, but napped sometimes in the afternoon. He didn't spend enough time warming up during his training. He took scalding showers that managed to leak steam through the cracks of the sliding bathroom door. He had total disdain for most Earth media and entertainment, but once she caught him pausing on his way through a room where someone was blasting glam rock, and she could swear to fucking Kami he smirked when he thought no one was looking.

Bulma was left with a head full of too much observed information about the stupidly hot psychopath living her house, but she was a goddamned fucking professional. She ran a multi-billion zeni corporation. She would organize, prepare, and then divide and conquer this Saiyan ass.

* * *

The first issue was this: fucking clothing.

Or not — _fucking_ clothing. Fucking _clothing_. Because that whole maybe-he's-half-naked-today-or-maybe-he's-just-wearing-skintight-clothing thing was really not cutting it. It really wasn't cutting it when she caught sight of him bending over to grab a towel after a long training session. It really _really_ wasn't cutting it when she literally _ran into him_ coming out of the kitchen and realized there was pretty much nothing in between them.

So yes. Clothing. A laughably easy task financially, but it required a little more thought in the actual selection process. Bulma derived great satisfaction from officially labeling him as a dangerous substance.

Of course, she never managed to get an actual opinion out of him about whether he _liked_ any of the clothes she'd picked out. (Hah hah hah. How simple life might have been.) But eventually he started wearing them, either because he simply wore out his armor and bodysuits or because she may or may not have thrown one or two in the incinerator. There are some smells even industrial cleaning can't remove.

It wasn't long before she'd realized her mistake.

* * *

The first time Bulma saw Vegeta in human clothing, she had two immediate reactions.

One: He didn't look quite right. Not the clothes, but something about his stance or his attitude. It took her a few moments to realize what the problem was: for the first time she'd ever seen, he looked _self-conscious_. That particular tension to his shoulders, the dart of his gaze, the determined indifference: they were all heightened and pointed from his usual attitude into something Bulma suddenly recognized as being human. Well, not from a technical standpoint, but-.

Two: He looked _super_ right. As in: holy shit super fucking super _fuckable_ right. Bulma had to forcibly drag her gaze away from the way the collar of the shirt framed his neck. She was seriously worried about what would happen when she saw him from the rear.

"What are you looking at?" he growled at her, glaring defiantly at her as if daring her to make a comment. He had just stepped into one of several lounges that dotted the Briefs' compound. Bulma was leaned over one of the installed terminals, quickly pulling up a file to make a note before she forgot. Of course, that was before Vegeta walked in and she forgot everything except neck shirt pants hello. Really, Vegeta's irritated snap was warranted, but she straightened up and gathered her wits for the daunting task of acting like her brain _wasn't_ currently lodged in her pants.

"Well, I think I was looking at _you_ , considering you just walked in the same room as me. Oh no, how dare I!" _Yesss, I am totally acing this. I can do this! I can act not like a sex-crazed moron!_

"Feh." Vegeta looked her up and down once and found her inadequate. It was a talent of his. "You were staring, woman."

In the face of this _bald-faced truth_ and _entirely accurate accusation_ , Bulma was left with no choice but to protest loudly. "Oh, please. You wish, Vegeta. Yes, you're just _so irresistible_ in your _button-down_ and _casual slacks_."

 _Yes, nothing gets a man into bed faster than acting like you find him totally repellant! Good job, Bulma. A-plus._

"Slacks," he echoed disdainfully, tasting the word and finding it wanting. Slowly, Bulma began to realize that he was standing there and - that. Just that. Standing there and not actually leaving or moving on or heading back to train or anything but stand there and look faintly awkward about something. Or kind of more - angry. That he was feeling awkward.

Bulma idly wondered how many of his feelings he got angry at for existing.

She stood there for a while, watching him stand there, giving him time to _not_ stand there, but eventually she had to ask: "Can I help you?"

"No," Vegeta said immediately with clear indignation in his voice, like oh-how-dare-you-think-I-need-help-at-anything and all of that. So she waited, crossing her arms under her breasts and lifting an eyebrow. Eventually he made a noise that vaguely resembled a growl and tossed something at her feet. She felt pretty freaking stupid when she jumped out of the way of the the highly dangerous weapon of - a pair of shoes. He did smirk at her reaction, but the expression was short-lived as it furrowed back into irritation.

"Your human footwear makes no sense," he sneered at her. "These strips of fabric are puny. They'll snap in an instant."

Bulma stared at him for a moment, beginning to feel that telltale prickle of frustrated heat across her skin. "Are you - Are you serious right now?"

"Why would I joke about footwear, woman?" Vegeta crossed his arms over his chest in an even more aggravated mirror of her.

"I don't know, why would you _throw_ footwear?" Bulma rolled her eyes in as melodramatic a fashion as she could manage. "The shoes are fine, Vegeta. They're not going to spontaneously snap apart under the weight of your _mighty steps_. Pretty sure the bigger threat would be your _ego_."

Vegeta just glared harder at her; she could almost imagine the air crackling around him. "They don't even function properly!"

Bulma blinked at him. "They don't-" Her eyes suddenly widened, and she _knew_. "You don't know how to tie your shoes."

"Why would I want to tie them to something, they're supposed to go on my _feet_ -"

She held up a hand, trying hard - Kami, _so fucking hard_ \- not to laugh and scare him away entirely. "No, I mean - how to fasten them. Tie the laces. Sorry, I didn't think - Earth kids start wearing them when they're little, but I guess you're always in boots-" She considered her options, briefly hesitating. _If I'm going for it, might as well go all in_. "Okay, just - sit down."

In the name of all that was holy, she saw his cheeks start to darken. "What? No. Don't be ridiculous."

Bulma took a deep breath and counted to ten. She was either going to strangle him or climb in his lap. "Vegeta. Chill out. I'm going to show you how they work so you don't wander around barefoot, that's all. Just sit down." It was her most reasonable tone of voice. It was her _only_ reasonable tone of voice, so if this one didn't work, she was shit out of luck.

For a few moments he stared her down, gaze narrowed, almost suspicious of her _shoe-tying offers_ , and finally snorted a sharp breath and strode over to the nearest chair in the room. It was just shy of stomping. His back was ramrod straight with his arms crossed, giving her a flash of more weird visions of _royal bearing_ and all of that ridiculousness.

Rolling her eyes again, Bulma started leaning over to grab the offending shoes from the floor, then paused midway to realize what an opportunity she was wasting, then attempted to salvage it by continuing to lean over - slower. _Not your best work, Bulma_. She straightened back up, face flushed, and decided to take out her general sense of annoyance and frustration on Vegeta by throwing the shoes at him. It was short-lived satisfaction. Throwing things at people with super-speed tended to just end up with those things being caught, but at least he was glaring at her in a mildly satisfying way.

Sigh. "Just put them on. I'm not your lady's maid."

He bristled under a suspected insult. "My _what_?"

"Forget it. Just put them on." After another few moments of glaring, which was becoming all sorts of less impressive as she waited, he finally leaned over to stuff his feet in his shoes, at which point he transferred his glaring to the laces dangling loose.

Bulma swallowed a sudden flutter of nerves - she was _doing this_ , nothing could stop her! - and strode over to him with every outward appearance of confidence. (She was pretty awesome, after all. And super hot. And she was, in fact, an expert at tying shoes.) "Try not to freak out," she deadpanned at him, and got the barest flicker in his expression in reaction. Hopefully it was indication that she'd worried him about what this strange, alien ritual might entail.

"Woman, I do not _freak out_ ," he snarled at her, and she just smirked back at him as she sunk to her knees between his legs. She cackled internally when she saw his eyes widen in their stare on her, but offered him nothing visible except that lingering curve of her mouth.

"I'm sure your advanced Saiyan brain can slow itself down enough to get the hang of it," Bulma told him, and she drew her fingers lightly across one knee, almost casual enough to be accidental. It was considerably less accidental when she slid both hands down the sides of his calf to make their way slowly to his shoe; she was dying to glance back up at him for a reaction, but didn't want to ruin her uber-smooth seduction technique.

"I won't give you the usual spiel about bunnies and ears," she told him in a low, warm voice. "But the basic idea is - tie, one loop, circle around - shit." Her whole seductive teacher thing was ruined when she literally flubbed while tying a shoe. "It's a little different from this angle. Um." She tugged the laces to loosen them and somehow managed to get them tangled. "What the fuck. Hold on." Bulma was left picking out the knot with her nail until she could finally pull the laces loose again. "Hah! There, okay. Just - you're watching, right?" She glanced back up at him and was met with the oddest expression: something between disgust, amusement, and - something else. She tried to focus on the something else. Something else was promising!

"I'm watching," Vegeta said, his voice bland. Her brows lowered as she glared, then her gaze lowered back to her work. "Okay. _As I was saying_. Just-" She tied. She looped. She circled. She pulled. She wondered how the hell tying a shoe suddenly becomes a weird and strange activity when you're doing it backwards on a shoe belonging to a weird alien prince you want to bang. Looking back at him under the shade of her lashes, she asked, "Did you get it?"

His gaze was fixed beneath her on the tied laces of his shoe. "It looks ridiculous," he said.

A sudden flush of anger crept up the pale skin of her neck. "They're just _shoelaces_ , Vegeta, no one even _looks_ at them!" With sudden vindictiveness, she yanked one lace to release the whole bow. "Fine, figure it out yourself. Or just trip over your own laces like an idiot, I don't care." She stood up in a flurry of movement, her curled hair bouncing angrily, and only had the briefest of moments to catch the focus of his gaze on her flushed neck before she whipped around to storm out.

 _Fuck him! Fuck him and his - neck-looking_.

 _...dammit._

* * *

She wasn't sure if she was angry or sullenly proud when she saw him a few days later, shoelaces messily tied but secure.

She _did_ know that she needed to rethink her strategy.


	3. Persisting Strategy

**Persisting Strategy** : a strategy that seeks to destroy the means by which the enemy sustains itself.

* * *

Okay here was the next problem: the fucking gravity chamber.

It's not that Bulma hated the gravity chamber _inherently_ ; on the contrary, it was a triumph of Briefs brilliance by both her father and herself, and she could never hate her brilliant, talented children.

It's just that Vegeta loved it _even more than she did_.

Failed attempts at shoelace seduction aside, the next major problem that Bulma was identifying in her campaign is that she just saw so _little_ of Vegeta. The genius, modelesque president of Capsule Corporation was well-aware of the _varied_ and _extreme_ _allurements_ she had to offer, but somehow these didn't stack up to a room that was able to adjust its level of gravity.

Fine. That was fine.

No, of course it wasn't fucking fine. But here was the good part: Bulma knew how to fix the gravity chamber, and had in fact been called on - loudly, interspersed with profanity - to do so several times. So logic dictated that she was the foremost expert - possibly just behind her father - in breaking it. In very, very specific ways. That only she could fix.

Game on.

* * *

All she had to do was sit back and wait. Well, actually she was sitting _forward_ and doing productive things, because trying to seduce a Saiyan prince didn't mean that she didn't have a shitton of other work to get done, and she didn't have the time to laze around while waiting for her traps to spring. She had shit to do.

Ironically, she had actually gotten really engrossed in figuring out the quantum anti-particle polarity issue on her dad's new pet project, so the snap of her voice in response to Vegeta's interruption was probably harsher than warranted. Given that she, you know, actually planned out the interruption.

At first, he just stomped in and stood there glaring at her, like he shouldn't even have to say anything for her to lavish him with attention. She was only dimly aware of his presence. Eventually he was forced to bark out, "Woman!"

" _What_? I'm busy, Vegeta." Bulma frantically punched numbers through the computer before her current idea slipped away.

"I need you," Vegeta snapped back at her, and _that_ got her attention. Her head whipped up from its focus on the computer screen. She felt all the blood in her body rush to her face and her you-know-fucking-where.

"Um," Bulma said. Vegeta strode up to the desk, slamming his hand on its surface and looming over her. She was suddenly incredibly aware of the heat of him. The small part of her brain still working was saying something about Saiyan metabolism and higher body temperatures until it was ruthlessly squashed by libido. WIth effort, she lifted her gaze from his chest, which was currently and deliciously eye level, to his face above her.

"The gravity chamber," he continued, his voice still short. "It requires repair."

"Yeah, so do I," Bulma said in a helpless sort of way before she could stop herself.

"What?"

"Nevermind. Gravity chamber. Right." Bulma stood, and Vegeta pulled back only enough to avoid getting smacked on the chin. It left them close to eye level, Bulma's gaze barely lowered to match his. Her gaze caught on his features, held as they were in such proximity, and she found herself tracing the line of his jaw with her eyes. By the time she made it back to his eyes, she was startled to catch him staring. Not glaring.

Of course, as soon as he caught her catching him, his expression darkened again, and he crossed his arms; he was still close enough that the gesture just brushed her. "I don't have all day, woman."

And just like that, she was snapped into focus. "Neither do I, Vegeta," Bulma said, hands setting on her hips. "I'll be by later when I have time. Find something else to entertain yourself with for an hour or two." She waited, ignoring the sound of her pulse in her ears.

"Feh." Vegeta finally stepped back and turned to stalk back out of the room. Bulma could only assume that meant something like, _Yes ma'am, I'll wait on your leisure_.

* * *

Bulma was not one to waste an opportunity, particularly one she had orchestrated with such - personal attention.

There was actually several minutes of outfit consideration where she was totally at a loss. What _did_ Saiyans find attractive? Bulma had instincts that served her well - _more_ than well - against human men, but would it translate? Did she need to find some sort of monkey suit to get his attention? She had a flash of stubborn resolve at the thought: _If that's what it takes…_

Might as well start with what she knew and go from there, though. So when Bulma finally waltzed - no, _sauntered_ \- down the hall towards the gravity chamber, she was decked out in the hottest mechanic getup she could put together. Jean cutoff shorts hugged her hips and left the lean length of her legs bare. A thin tank dipped low in the front and on the sides to reveal the clinging lace of her bra underneath. Her hair was mussed in a style that took an excessive amount of time to look careless, and her eyes were colored dark. It was almost impossible _not_ to saunter when she felt this down-and-dirty delicious.

 _Kami, screw Vegeta._ I'd _fuck the hell out of me._

"It's about time," Vegeta was saying as he slid his gaze over. "I've been waiting-"

Bulma could _feel_ the moment his gaze hit her. It wasn't just that he stopped talking, but the way his eyes fixed on her with the sudden intensity of a predator identifying prey. _Oh, if only you knew_ , she cackled. She swore she could see his nostrils flare.

"Forever, I know," Bulma replied to him in his silence, rolling her eyes and tossing her hair a bit for maximum effect. "How awful to have to wait a couple hours for once in your life. Don't worry, Bulma's here to magic your cares away with science." She swanned right past him, lifting a hand - was she going to do it, _of course she was going to do it_ \- to lightly boop his nose on her way past. She could feel his eyes burning into her back and wanted to stretch to luxuriate in the feeling, but she settled for one final coy glance over shoulder before stepping into the gravity chamber.

* * *

 _Ah, how the mighty have fallen_.

An hour later and Bulma was running out of steam. No, not strictly accurate: her steam was being redirected to frustration as Vegeta continually refused to throw her against a wall and ravish her.

Five minutes into her "repair" session she took advantage of an awesome angle to slowly lean over an opened control panel. Ten minutes later she was able to crack open one of the side panels and slide inside on her back so that her long, bare legs stretched out in enticingly full view. She even pulled out the most cliche bend-all-the-way-over-to-pick-up-that-wrench she could manage about forty-five minutes in. Yet, _somehow_ , he was totally unaffected.

No, not totally unaffected; she could give herself that much credit. She wasn't imagining the way his gaze lingered on her at points throughout the hour - in between bouts of complaints at how much time the whole thing was taking. But really, after that much time of contorting herself into revealing poses, she knew that a more direct approach was called for. She also knew that it was called for tomorrow or the next day, because now she really was sweaty and gross and kind of irritated at the whole thing.

"Okay, fine, it's fixed," Bulma said, trying to push back loose wisps of hair from her face. Vegeta watched her, lip curling.

"Tch. You're filthy," he said, as if he had _no familiarity_ with _working one's self into a sweat_ , come on.

Bulma rolled her eyes, officially out of fucks for the day. "Yeah, Vegeta, science is actually work, thanks." She turned away from him, leaning over with significantly less artifice to toss her gloves in her bag and haul the whole thing up onto her shoulder.

She could actually feel him behind her - something about the heat of his body - moments before she felt his touch on the back of her neck. It was brief, the swipe of a thumb, but she could feel the warmth of his skin on hers through the glove he wore. Her neck felt cooler in the instant his touch left. Then everything seemed to tingle when his fingers settled, feather-light, on her neck. Bulma couldn't breathe. Part of her felt that if she moved an inch, he'd be gone.

"Grease," he said, the word a disdainful explanation that said nothing about the lingering touch of his fingers now. He was so close behind her that she could just almost feel the breath of the word on her skin. He leaned closer. "I told you," he growled, breath on her ear holy shit. "Filthy."

 _Kami. Shit fuck._ Options were racing through Bulma's head, but the loudest thoughts were more along the lines of _shit shit shit he's right behind me why is he this hot why is he breathing on my skin why isn't he KISSING ME why isn't he kissing me RIGHT NOW_. Amazingly - _ah-maz-ing-ly_ \- she managed enough self-control to turn her head slowly back just enough to catch him from the corner of her eye. She smirked just the tiniest bit and felt like a fucking rock star of restraint.

"I'm not scared of getting my hands dirty, Vegeta," Bulma said, her voice pitched low and quiet and almost a goddamned purr. Her gaze flitted over his features: the way his expression seemed to shutter and evade when she looked at him, the line of his mouth, the darkness of his eyes. "Are you?"

Vegeta's gaze snapped with sudden force to her eyes. His hand jerked away and he stepped back, that closed expression being replaced by a more typical sneer. "If you don't want to be squashed meat on the floor in a minute, I suggest you leave."

Bulma just smiled wider. "Sure, Vegeta," she said, her voice light and casual in the face of his gruesome warning. She took a few steps to the door before flirting one last glance at him over her shoulder; she was rewarded with a nice, lingering look of his back at the control panel before she finished her saunter to the exit.

The door closed behind her, and she could hear the hum of the chamber begin to come to life again. Bulma had to fling a hand in front of her mouth to cover the sudden bubble of a cackle that escaped her. It didn't matter how mean he wanted to play or how distant he wanted to act. All she was feeling was his hand on her neck and his breath on her skin.

She had him.


	4. Shape, Clear, Hold, Build

**Shape, Clear, Hold, Build:** a counter-insurgency strategy that uses native forces to identify the nature and strength of the enemy threat in a given area (shape), defeat the enemy threat (clear), keep the area clear of enemies (hold), and establish native democratic institutions which draw their legitimacy from the local people (build).

* * *

Bulma was not patient by nature, but she found when there was something she really, truly wanted, she was willing to try. She wasn't at all scared of hard work.

Vegeta definitely qualified as hard work.

She started asking him to do things for her. Little things that weren't too out of his way, but just enough to keep her at the forefront of his mind. That also allowed her to sidle close and get all up in his personal space. One day she convinced him to fly up and grab one of the flying drones that got stuck in the rafters of a warehouse. Another time she sat him down at a table and made him try finger foods on the pretense of needing a second opinion for a fancy company gala they had coming up. She even pulled out the most obvious, one-the-nose trope of hunting him down to zip up her dress once said gala actually came around; at least he didn't have a lifetime of consuming human media to understand exactly how cliche that one was.

And then there was one particularly eventful interaction.

"Ugh, I swear to Kami-" Bulma twisted on the cap of the jar, arms flexing, body twisting with effort. There was no way she was getting it off. She knew this because she took a wrench to it to tighten it up far past the limits of normal human hand strength.

Which was when Vegeta walked in, fresh and damp from a shower. It was enough to almost distract her entirely from her mission, what with the way things were - clinging - but she steeled herself enough to sidle over and peek at him around the refrigerator door he'd just opened.

"Vegeta."

"Hn."

Bulma fluttered her eyelashes. "Vegeta."

His gaze finally slid to watch her, brow furrowed. She plowed ahead with cheer that entirely ignored his attempts at total non-response. "It's the stupidest thing, but I can't get this jar open. And _obviously_ you're the strongest thing in the house…" Her voice trailed off in what she hoped was a suitably enticing manner as she held the jar up towards him.

His gaze dropped disdainfully to the jar in her hand, and she could watch his gaze reading the label. He sneered. "I hate carrots."

"Well, then it's a good thing I'm not going to make you eat them, isn't it?" Bulma smirked at him, undeterred by sneering, her posture hipshot against the refrigerator door. "Come on, it's embarrassing enough for me that I have to ask _anybody_ for help. Don't you want to use all those muscles to help a girl out?"

"No," Vegeta said, and she thought - _maybe_ \- she could sense the tiniest bit of fluster. But she wiggled the jar at him some more, and he snatched it from her hand. "This is pathetic," he told her. "I've no idea how humanity isn't extinct yet."

Bulma sighed dramatically. "I know, we're just the worst. Can't even open a jar of pickled carrots. Lucky I've got you around the house to pick up my slack, huh?" He started to set his hand on the lid, and she stepped forward to set her hand lightly on his arm.

And that's when the jar shattered.

Bulma almost leapt out of her skin, because whatever her plan was, it didn't account for broken glass and pickled carrots all over the floor. " _Shit_. Wow, sorry, I didn't expect - ahaha, guess you _are_ pretty strong, huh." She laughed weakly before her gaze finally resettled on Vegeta's face.

He was flushed and kind of gaping at his own hand in a way that Bulma suspected was not necessarily about his actual injury but rather - oh, shit, that _was_ an actual injury. That was kind of bleeding all over. "Um. Okay so you're bleeding a bunch, which I know is pretty normal for you, but why don't you just-" She started tugging on his arm to try and pull him towards the table. "-humor me here and sit down and I'll just-" She'd only gotten him to move a few steps before she whirled around to one of the wall panels nearby and punched the buttons to summon a maintenance droid or two to take care of the mess. "-so just stand by the sink and I'll grab-" She dug around one of the cabinets for a first aid kit. Her house was littered with first aid kids. The cupboards were asexual beings who reproduced first aid kit babies.

"Okay! I got it. Why are you still standing there?" Now with only one mission left, Bulma's focus was laser-like. Vegeta, on the other hand, looked like he hadn't quite caught up with what was happening.

"Why wouldn't I be standing?" he snapped, at least a few steps out of the mess, but with his hand still lifted. And bleeding. It was so, _so_ far from the first time Bulma had seen a bleeding man, but it usually wasn't in her kitchen.

"Because I told you to stand by the _sink_ so that I can clean you up," Bulma said, one hand fisting on her hip. She hoped that the sudden whirring appearance of a maintenance droid to start sucking up glass and carrots wasn't undermining her authority. "So go!"

Looking almost as baffled as she felt by her own success, Vegeta went. His expression was furrowed deep with a frown, although for once it wasn't directed at her as she stood next to him.

"Don't worry, I've only done this a million times," she told him, flashing a grin. She left the first aid kit on the counter and then reached for his hand, careful of the deep gash across his palm. Her fingertips just managed to touch before he snatched it away.

"I don't need your help!" he snapped at her, the flush of his skin darkening even more. "I certainly don't need your useless human medicine. It will be gone by morning."

"Oh my God, you're so full of shit," Bulma laughed, rolling her eyes. "Yeah, fine, your mighty ~Saiyan metabolism~ heals faster, but this still needs a little cleaning. Come on. You're not the first Saiyan I've bandaged up."

Vegeta's nostrils flared. "I don't need any of the help you gave to _Kakarrot_ -"

"Oh for the love of-" Bulma reached again for his hand, managing to get a hold on it while he was distracted with self-righteous indignation. There was no way she could ever hope to move or adjust him if he didn't let her, so she made all sorts of conclusions in her favor when she managed to get his hand laid across hers. "Just - humor me, okay?"

Vegeta watched her for a long time, lip curled and temper still hot across his skin. "Tch," he finally said, turning his head back to profile. "If it will cease your whining."

"It will," Bulma promised him, a smile tucked away in the corners of her mouth. She turned on the faucet, checking the temperature with her other hand before setting his under the stream of water. He was passive in his allowance, but she could feel the tension practically _radiating_ from him. "Relax," she said, stepping closer and turning his hand gently out so that she could get a better look at it with the blood washed away. He was so warm. Kami, no, he was like _fire_ -.

Bulma cleared her throat delicately. "Like you said: I'm sure you'll have it mostly stitched up by morning, but the least I can do is not leave you with an infected, rotting off hand under my roof." She unwrapped a wad of gauze from the kit and pressed it into his palm, suddenly struck by the total, surreal normalcy of the scene. The mighty Saiyan Prince with a cut on his hand and she was just cleaning it up. "Put pressure on that, will you? I'm sure you can exert like a billion more pounds of force than I can." In response, he glared at her, but did reach to press his other hand against the gauze. _If_ that _didn't stop the bleeding in five seconds flat…_

Both hands free, she dug around the first aid kit for some antibacterial ointment; by the time she located it and looked back, she caught him looking down at his wounded hand with an expression approaching - concerned. Brought up a bit short, she said, "Vegeta, it's okay," she said, her words sure but her voice totally baffled. "That's not even going to leave a scar."

His gaze snapped back up to her, fierce and dark. "I'm not _concerned_ about my _wound_. I've suffered countless injuries far more severe than this-"

 _Kami save me_. Bulma put up a hand to cut off any monologuing on that topic. "I _know_ , Vegeta. You don't have to convince me." She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, gnawing briefly, and then just moved on. "You can let go now. You probably stopped the bleeding, like - instantly." All her other plans and concerns briefly fell away as she focused on the task at hand, smearing the ointment and securing the bandage.

"I was not concerned about the _wound_." It actually startled her to hear his voice again. His words were clipped, as if he was forcing them out against his better judgment. "I wasn't _concerned_ -" Bulma kept her gaze lowered, resuming the careful dressing of his hand after her startle. "My control should not be that poor," he finally managed to snap out.

She finally looked up, her brows furrowed in confusion. "What?"

"The _jar_. I am not a child that I cannot handle glass without shattering it. It should not have happened." Bulma could see the muscle in his jaw jump as he tensed it, and her expression creased in a faint frown. _Probably the closest he'd ever get to an apology._

But then she smiled and said, her voice light, "It's just some carrots and some glass, Vegeta. And it's already cleaned up." She smoothed down the bandage, her eyes crinkling. "And so are you. Ta-da!"

Vegeta snorted lightly, his hand dropping back down to his side without inspection, his gaze studying her. Again, he sneered. "You humans are hardly more durable than your glass."

Bulma held up a finger. "One, not true: there's glass that's /way/ more durable than I am. Two, again not true, because I _am_ way more durable than a fucking glass you little shit."

" _What_ did you just call me?!"

"Um, something totally, 100% accurate? One, you're little, two, you're-"

And then he was kissing her. Forget zipping up dresses, this was the biggest fucking cliche of all, because Vegeta _cut her off_ to _kiss her_. _Interrupted her_ in the _middle of a sentence_ like they were in some sort of _movie_ or something _was this really her life_.

And then she couldn't really think at all, because his mouth was a searing heat on her skin, and his hands were dancing somewhere around her hips, restless and urgent. Her hands found his neck, his face, his hair, anything she could touch that was him. She felt the edge of the counter at her back and pulled him closer, and suddenly she could feel his hands on her thighs, hoisting her up, and then her legs were around his waist to urge him even nearer. She wanted to touch every inch of him. Her head was screaming at her - _it's happening it's happening I am a genius I am the most beautiful woman in the world I am going to score so hard_ \- but his hands wouldn't settle, wouldn't grab, wouldn't even _touch_ , and eventually she had to break the kiss, gasping for air, to tell him in a half-laughing voice, "For the love of Kami, Vegeta, just _touch me_."

"I will _break you_ ," Vegeta snapped back at her, his breath on her cheek, somewhere on the edge of his control. _For Kami's sake_. She stroked her fingers down the back of his neck, delighting in the feeling of his skin shivering beneath her touch.

"You won't break me, Vegeta," she said against his skin. She dropped one leg from his waist to draw her foot slowly up his thigh. " _Kami_ , Vegeta, I am literally like right here ready to be ravished. You're not a kid having his first time; you're not gonna kill me." He went very still under her touch. The breath on her cheek stilled.

"I-" His cheek seemed to warm against her skin.

 _Okay wait hold up._ "Vegeta, have you never-" He very clearly, distinctly said nothing. She pulled back, eyes wide, to try and get a look at his face, but he'd turned it away. All she could make out was the line of tension across his jaw. "You're a-" She heard him make an exasperated noise, and the whole thing was so _ridiculous_ , so _completely_ out of left field, so beyond what she'd ever expected that she did the worst possible thing she could do.

She laughed.

It was a quick, stunned sort of giggle that fell out of her in a helpless tumble before she could quite literally cover her mouth with both her hands. It was too late, though. The expression that he'd been trying to hide from her suddenly snapped into view, his eyes burning with fury, and for the first time in several years Bulma honestly wondered if he was about to murder her.

He didn't. He extricated himself with such speed that it was almost like he disappeared, and Bulma was left sitting on the kitchen counter, an open first aid kit next to her, and a maintenance droid whirring away to deposit its trash in the proper receptacles.

 _Well_ , she thought. _I'm the shittiest person in the universe._


	5. Détente

**Détente** : the easing of hostility or strained relations, especially between countries.

* * *

So. That happened.

Bulma's reaction for several days afterwards was to spend a lot of time staring at the ceiling or a wall or something else suitably blank while contemplating how shitty she felt. Eventually she was too disgusted at how incredibly self-pitying the whole thing was, which brought her to her next step in the reaction ladder: throwing herself into her work. Granted, she was usually neck-deep in work anyways, but who really needs to breathe? Just dunk the whole head under! It'll be fine!

She _did_ try apologizing. She tried catching Vegeta in the kitchen one day, which yeah _was_ the place where she'd pissed him off, but it also was his second favorite place after the gravity chamber and the one that he'd tolerate interruptions in more. She'd edged up to the table where he sat with an impossibly large sandwich between his hands, her hands clasped in front of her, her chin dropped in shame. Shame! She came to him _shame-faced!_ And she stood next to the table and actually spoke the words, "Listen, Vegeta, I'm sorry. I was such an ass-"

And then he stood up. Just _stood up_. And _left_! He picked up his sandwich and left. He didn't even look at her. Bulma was left there standing like a total idiot watching this Prince of Assholes walk out. Except, joke's on her, she was actually the Queen of Assholes. She had actually been _meaner than Vegeta_. What a thing to swallow.

* * *

Bulma was far from easily deterred. She didn't go out of her way to run into him, but she was _aggressively_ nice about it when she did. Oh, he wanted to be (justifiably) pissy? She'd be the _nicest fucking person on the planet_.

Case in point: she kept an eye on his training one day so that she could intercept him on his way to the shower afterwards, her arms loaded with fluffy towels fresh from the dryer.

"Oh, what timing!" she said, her voice bright and innocent as she looked at him over the pile, the two of them stalled in front of the bathroom door. "Towels just came out of the dryer. They're still warm!" She shoved out at him in an aggressively display of generosity that had him recoiling as if from an attack. His brow was furrowed, not out of anger, but with a faint sense of bafflement.

"What?" he snapped at her, bristling with the oddity of her offer.

"Towels!" she said again. "They're way better when they're fresh. All warm and fluffy." She shoved them more forcefully at his chest until his arms finally curled to receive them. "See? And you're about to shower, right? Obviously. And now you have fresh towels." Bulma set her hands on her hips, positively glowing with anticipated triumph.

For a long stretch of silence, Vegeta just looked down at the towels in his arms. She remained there, undaunted. Finally, his gaze lifted. His lip curled. With a voice precise in its disdain, he said, "Are you a servant now?"

Bulma's victory faltered. Her smile became stretched and frozen.

"I had thought you and your mad family were people of importance on this planet." His gaze dropped again to the towels. "Feh." Without another word, he moved past her, stepped into the bathroom, and slammed the door behind him.

 _Fine_ , she thought. _Fine!_

* * *

So she left him alone. She tried to think about other things she wanted out of people when they were jerks to _her_ , then threw out most of her ideas; she couldn't really imagine Vegeta falling for wild alien technology being dropped in his lap to tinker with while she gave him a foot massage. She had no idea what stuck-up, antagonistic Saiyan princes wanted in their apologies.

Which was how she ended up asleep on her desk being woken up by the gentle stroke of her mother's fingers across her hair. Bulma awoke slowly, barely able to peel her eyes open, and attempted with limited success to focus her gaze on her visitor. "...mom?"

"Oh, honey, you just looked so sweet and peaceful I couldn't help it." Mrs. Briefs smiled in that impossibly warm, sunny way she had, her fingers still smoothing back her daughter's hair. More importantly, Bulma thought she espied a mug in her mother's other hand with a telltale swirl of steam emanating. A rich, caffeinated aroma wafted therefrom.

"I love you," she told her mother, which just made the older woman laugh as she set the coffee down on her desk.

"Of course, dear," she said. Mrs. Briefs tucked a lock of hair behind her daughter's ear. "Why don't you come have some breakfast?"

Bulma surreptitiously shifted her head until she could get the nearest clock in view; her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she calculated. Her mother interrupted her thoughts to note all idle-dreamy, "Vegeta already ate half of the kitchen, but there's plenty more." She drifted back out of the office, leaving Bulma scowling and pretending she totally didn't care whether or not she'd run into Vegeta eating breakfast _anyways_.

But she was hungry.

* * *

Half an hour later, she'd consumed another mug of coffee and a plate of pancakes and bacon and almost felt like a person. Her mother was still fluttering about the kitchen, cleaning up this and that and cheerily refusing any assistance. Bulma watched her, suddenly and inexplicably miserable in the face of such easy contentedness.

"I really screwed up, mom," she said, quiet and shamefaced.

"What's that, dear?" Mrs. Briefs was drying a pan, her dress covered with a floral apron.

"I did a shitty thing and it was an accident but now - this person's mad at me, and I deserve it, but I don't know what to do to make it better." Bulma sunk lower in her seat. She felt ten.

Her mother carefully set the pan in its proper place inside a cupboard. "Does this have anything to do with that handsome Vegeta stalking around even moodier than usual?" she wondered.

"Uhm." Bulma could feel her face heat. "N - o?" She watched her mother drying off a plate and sunk even lower. "Yes?"

Mrs. Briefs puttered about, putting the plate away, setting utensils in their proper places. "Well, dear, if you did something rude, you ought to apologize. I'm sure he'll come around. He's a very thoughtful, sensitive young man."

Bulma stared at her mother and considered what planet the strange creature who birthed her might be from. "I'm not sure those are the words I'd use to describe him," she said. After a musing beat, she added, "Well, maybe sensitive. Like 'everything you do is wrong' kind of sensitive."

"That doesn't sound very much like an apology, Bulma," her mother said. Bulma put her face on the table.

"I'm the worst," she lamented.

"You're being dramatic, dear."

"I'm being accurate," Bulma muttered into her arms.

Eyes shut against the world, Bulma could only hear her mother continue to work around the kitchen: the tink of metal, the clink of ceramic. Eventually she heard the careful stream of refilling liquid into the mug near her head. "You're the best," she mumbled.

Mrs. Briefs patted her head again, and when Bulma finally lifted her head, her mother was sitting at the table with her, her slim hands wrapped around a cup of tea.

"Maybe you could try making it up to him," Mrs. Briefs suggested. "I bet he'd love a nice pie. Saiyans are such an appreciative audience for cooking."

"Mom, it was an event when I _didn't_ catch the house on fire last time I tried cooking," Bulma said, pulling her refilled mug of coffee closer.

"True," her mother agreed wistfully. "I'm sure you'll figure out something more your style, then."

"Hn."

* * *

 _Something more my style, huh?_

It took a couple weeks all together. First it was a few more days of moping and languishing just to think of the idea. Then she had to steal an original out from under his nose, and then it took another week to reverse engineer and figure out _what_ exactly it was made from.

She was so engrossed in the work, which quickly became an obsession in its own right and not just an outside shot of earning forgiveness for being a total buttface, that she didn't even notice when she missed seeing Vegeta for days in a row. It wasn't _that_ strange an occurrence, and it had been perfectly common before she realized it was imperative that she climb on top of him and ride him until she couldn't feel her legs. So it was kind of startling when she looked up and caught him glowering at her from the doorway.

Bulma made a show of glancing behind her for some other person he might be glaring at before returning her gaze to him with lifted brows. "Can I help you?"

Vegeta made a noise of disgust and dropped his gaze to look at the contents of her work table instead. "What are you doing?" he demanded, his arms crossed over his chest.

"Uhm." Bulma considered her answer, gaze darting down at her work surreptitiously. "Science?"

"I can see that," he snapped at her, color rising along the sharp angles of his cheekbones. His gaze dipped to her work again, then he turned his head to glare at the wall instead. "Tch. Forget it, woman." And with that, he stalked off, leaving her baffled.

* * *

The last week was taking the building blocks and transforming them into something even awesomer than how they started. Not to toot her own horn or anything, but actually she was a genius. (Actually, toot the horn. Toot it so loud.)

It was beautiful. There were actually several minutes she spent just admiring it, loathe to even consider giving it up. But she had a mission, after all, and what was _she_ going to do with it? So she marched it right on back towards the gravity chamber, fully expecting to swan in with her prize and something something Vegeta falling to his knees in gratitude something something face between her legs something something no more clothes. It was a really awesome expectation. She was looking forward to it.

Except then she ran smack dab into said brick solid Saiyan prince. She rounded a corner and wham, there he was, and there _she_ was, literally running into Vegeta because she was too distracted _thinking about sexing up Vegeta_.

"Hi!" she said, voice bright with excitement despite her clear incompetence at living. "I made you armor!"

She shoved the chestplate (appropriately) at his chest. Vegeta looked down at it, brow creased and furrowed, expression dark. He lifted a hand and hooked a finger under the shoulder of the armor. He sneered.

"It's pretty much better in every conceivable way," she said, diving right in, hands gesturing animatedly as she talked. "I've strengthened the material with some - well, science science, you don't care - but I managed to shave off some mass and lighten the whole thing up. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised your old set wasn't more advanced to begin with; you'd think with all that interstellar travel and technology Frieza had, he'd have better upgrades. Then again, I guess he didn't have me, huh?" Bulma tossed her hair and felt completely and entirely incredible.

She suddenly realized that she'd yet to give Vegeta room to thank and compliment her properly. Refocusing on him, she frowned to see that his furrowed expression had turned even stormier, leaving him glaring at her with eyes dark and sharp and dangerous.

"What?" she said, finally interrupting her own lecture. In case he was unaware, she added, "This is the part where you say thanks. And mention something about how brilliant I am." After a beat, she added with a shyer smile, "Or just that you forgive me being a total butt and accept my apology?"

Vegeta took a step closer, and Bulma felt her loins sing an aria. "So," he said, his voice low and crisp. "This is either a masturbatory celebration of your own ego or an attempt to purchase your desired reaction from me."

Bulma felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. "What? No, I was just-"

"Trying to buy my forgiveness." The slide of Vegeta's smirk was hard and cruel. "You're not the first being I've encountered to beg something of me."

She almost took a step back, the feeling of being slapped across the face was so real. Her skin heated with the snap of her temper, and she was sure that her face was already close to scarlet. "Ex _cuse me_?!"

Something glittered in his eyes, predatory, and his smirk widened. "No," he said. "I don't think so." He moved past her, their shoulders brushing, and she watched him go - with her armor! - with some mix of baffle and fury.

 _What. What!_

She stared hard at the retreating sight of her armor dangling from his fingers, wishing she could reach out and snatch it back out of his stupid, asshole, ungrateful hands.

Okay, so she'd accidentally laughed at a sensitive thing. It was a _mistake_. It was an _accident_ , and she didn't even mean it in the terrible, awful way it clearly sounded like!

But this. _This!_ Taking something that she'd slaved away on to make better in every conceivable way and looking at it like it was trash? And then _insulting_ her? No. No way.

This meant war.


	6. Escalation

**Escalation:** the growth over time of conflict and hostilities in a political or military context.

* * *

"Your worthless contraption is broken again," Vegeta spat at her after storming up to her desk and dropping what she quickly recognized as a _piece of the control panel_ from the gravity chamber. She looked up from the broken panel to his face, her fine, delicate brow arched.

In as calm a voice as she could manage, she said, "It looks more like you broke my incredibly _worthwhile_ contraption, Vegeta."

"Feh. Perhaps your oh-so-valuable contraption should be more _durable_ ,." He sneered down at her, his arms crossing.

Her fingers started curling against the desk, threatening to fist. "That's because it's a _highly advanced_ piece of equipment, Vegeta, and it's providing you a _highly important function_ , and in order to do the crazy, physics-defying things that it does, it requires some delicate machinery to work!" Okay, now they _were_ fisted, and she was standing and seeing red. She pressed right up into his personal space without making the decision to move.

"Don't yell at me, woman!" he snapped at her, bristling at her sudden proximity even as he refused to recoil from it.

"You're yelling at me!" she yelled back at him, jamming her finger in his chest.

It kind of deteriorated from there.

* * *

Bulma couldn't figure out whose fault it was anymore.

On the one hand, she had accidentally laughed at an admittedly sensitive topic. She kind of felt that her lack of harmful intent should get _some_ credit, but fine, disregard that. She laughed at a shitty thing to laugh at. She was an adult. She could own her mistakes.

On the other hand, he wouldn't listen to her apologies. Okay, he probably wasn't obligated to do that. Fine. Okay. Scratch that part. What he _was_ doing was being _super rude_ and a super giant asshole _all of the time_. Which wasn't exactly new, coming from him, but now it has reached a pretty intolerable level, and dammit, Bulma didn't deserve _that_. She made a mistake, but she was pretty sure that didn't make her a toilet for him to shit on repeatedly.

 _Ew. No more metaphors_.

She didn't have any strategies left. All she had left was a whole lot of irritation and anger and a sense of being one thousand percent _done with this Saiyan's shit_.

"You look a little haggard," Yamcha told her, not unkindly, over a beer. They were on one of the more spacious patios at her home, and she was enjoying the brief, sunny respite from work and - other complications.

"Ugh. Thanks a lot." Bulma propped her chin on her hand, glaring without heat at her currently ex-boyfriend. The ex part had finally seemed to stick this time, at least.

"Sorry. I didn't mean-" Yamcha gestured kind of lamely as he tried to think of the right word. "Just looks like you're working a lot. Which you usually are, too. But. You know. I still worry about you. Just as friends!" It was a refrain that they'd traded the past year: a constant reminder that was both pang and reassurance as they learned to awkwardly navigate a relationship on reset terms.

"We're all working," Bulma reminded him with a taut, weary slide to her smile. "Gearing up to save the world, right?"

"To be honest, Bulma - I'm training like everybody else, but let's be real here. I'm cannon fodder. I can't compare with any of these guys anymore." Yamcha smiled, but she could see the tension around his eyes that belied his frustration. Without even thinking, she reached out to cover his hand with hers, some long-buried instinct rearing its inappropriate head.

"We're all doing what we can," she told him, attempting a stronger smile. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a flicker of movement, and then a low, contemptuous voice sounded from the doorway.

"At least you're smart enough to know how useless you are." But Vegeta's gaze was not focused on Yamcha's face, but rather the set of Bulma's hand over the other man's. She had an immediate urge to pull her hand away, but then almost immediately after forced it to stay right the fuck where it was. If he thought he could come around and glare at her touching other guys, holy shit did he have another huge, _giant_ thing coming.

* * *

The next time she saw him, she was literally pulling armor over her head.

Definitely an unusual occurrence for her, but she'd grown so fascinated with the material's ability to grow and shrink to fit different size fighters that she needed to start testing the feel of it on smaller and larger forms. And, well, she was smaller than Vegeta and always available to model for herself.

She was checking the fit along the bottom of the chest piece, tugging it this way and that to test, when she suddenly caught sight of Vegeta staring at her through the open door of her lab.

"What," he said, his voice strangely guarded and the question flattened out, "are you doing."

"I'm testing science that you are absolutely uninterested in except when it's directly relevant and of benefit to your stupid face." Bulma huffed at him, her chin jerking forward stubbornly, her arms crossed. She watched his gaze track slowly down her figure to center on her chest. It left her feeling suddenly vulnerable in an entirely novel way. She was used to guys staring at her chest. This was not that.

"Or," she said next in the face of his silence, "I'm suiting up to go battle some aliens. Because I'm secretly the greatest fighter on the planet." _That_ had his gaze snapping back up to her face, his eyes narrowing. She smirked hard at him in as best a mimic of his own cruel expression as she could manage.

She saw his nostrils flare, and something weird and unreadable crossed his expression, something flittering that was almost akin to angered confusion. It was there and gone again, fast as quicksilver, to be replaced by a more familiar hardened irritation. Her gaze narrowed suddenly as her brain worked. She took a step forward.

He took a step back.

 _Interesting._ She took another step forward, and this time he stood, back straight and expression wary. He was obviously unwilling to make another move that would smack so clearly of retreat.

 _Kami, is he-._ Bulma stepped right up to him and reached out to _brazenly_ tap her finger on his cheek. A muscle under his eye twitched. "Wanna fight?" she asked, her voice daring.

He moved faster than she could even follow, and suddenly his hand was trapping hers in front of his face. At some point thereafter she found she'd forgotten a lot of the steps to breathing, but the challenge was still burning fierce in her gut.

"Either put up or shut up, Vegeta. If you're not going to fight, then get your hands off me." Somewhere in the more rational side of her brain, the more _reasonable_ side, she knew she was being unfair. But every look he gave and every word he snapped was like a challenge, and she found herself was boiling with it.

His gaze dropped for a fraction of an instant to her mouth, and then he dropped her hand with a sneer and stalked out.

* * *

She tugged harder on the wrench and let loose a stream of curses under her breath. Surprisingly, repairs that she didn't plan were a much bigger pain to than ones where she plotted the whole thing out. Vegeta was pacing the gravity chamber like an angry cat; if he still had his tail, she was sure it would've been bristled and lashing.

"A little help here?" she said, gesturing with, let's face it, just about equal impatience at the wrench and the Kami-forsaken stuck bolt that she could swear was _glued_ on that nut.

"Dammit, do I have to do everything-" One moment he was across the room, and the next he was there next to her, reaching out to take the wrench in hand and spin the bolt loose with an effort that looked about equivalent to her flicking a fly away. Somehow, this made her angrier.

"No, you don't. In fact, _I_ have to do _almost_ everything, while you have to do _one_ thing, because _I'm_ the one who actually knows how to manage and repair this thing. All you know how to do is _fucking punch it_." She shoved back in to grab the wrench, crowding him out, and loosened it the rest of the way to remove it.

"Actually, I'm the one who's going to save this miserable planet when the time comes," Vegeta spat out. "Assuming I don't grow so sick and tired of living in this miserable excuse for a dwelling and listening to your maddening, intolerable prattle that I blow up the entire compound and everyone in it."

For a moment her anger was so overwhelming that she couldn't even speak; her fingers curled around the wrench. Then Bulma reached out and grabbed his face, fingers digging into the sides of his jaw; the look of utter shock - that _she_ would lay hands on _him_ \- was gratifying.

"I don't _care_ how strong you are, Vegeta," she said - no, she _growled_ , she didn't even know she could do that. Her skin burned and blossomed red across her cheeks. "You can go ahead and kill me if you want, ruin whatever life you've made here. You may hate it, but it's all you have. _My house_ and _my food_ and, by the way _my gravity chamber_ are all you have right now, and if you don't like it, you can get the hell out."

She was, to put it mildly, pretty damn impressed with herself.

He watched her with those dark, dark eyes. The shock of his expression slid into something sharper and more dangerous. For a moment she contemplated the wisdom of the words she had just said, and also noted to herself that she actually _did_ kind of care if she died. His lips curled in a snarl, baring his teeth with his breath hissing through them as if he was about to snap at her, sink his teeth in, rend her to pieces.

He shoved her against the wall instead.

The sudden crack of her shoulders against the wall wasn't exactly pleasant, but it didn't seriously hurt her. For all her taunts and invitations, Bulma was _incredibly_ aware of just what kind of strength was lurking beneath the very thin veneer of Vegeta's self-control. His gloved hands slammed against the wall on either side of her head, and she could feel the heat nearly radiating off his skin. (Somewhere in the back of her mind her brain chattered about Saiyan metabolism and higher body temperature and lots of other _incredibly useless things for right this moment thanks brain_.)

Bulma felt a vicious defiance rising in her chest and she straightened, shoulders squaring against the wall, jaw hardening as she glared across at him. His fingers clenched as if to dig into the wall behind her. He twisted one hand in her hair, his grip testing, then slid his hand down the line of her throat. His hand stilled with his thumb pressed warm over her clavicle. She couldn't breathe.

He leaned in close, his cheek pressing against her jaw. His breath whispered in her ear as he inhaled her scent like a predator memorizing her for the hunt. "Kami, if only I could rip you to pieces," he snarled against her ear, his voice a low, furious growl. His hands dropped to her hips, and there was a moment when his fingers dug into her flesh before he stopped himself with a noise of wordless frustration in his throat.

 _Fuck this_. The more frustrated he seemed, the angrier she felt, until her fingers were twisting and gripping the front of his shirt, whatever she could get a handle on.

"What are you waiting for?"

* * *

( **NOTES:** Thanks for continuing to read! I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that the next chapter will be heavily edited for consumption. If you want to get a notice as soon as the unedited chapter goes up, feel free to subscribe over on AO3. A link to my profile there is in my profile here!)


	7. Penetration

( **AUTHOR NOTES:** Why is this so short?! It's because this chapter is almost entirely smut and is too explicit. If you are an unabashed smut reader like me, please go visit me on AO3 (that's ) as Roz to read the uncensored chapter. Links also posted on my Tumblr at Rozzingit. Feel free to still comment here if that's your preference!)

* * *

 **Penetration:** a direct attack through enemy lines.

* * *

"What are you waiting for?"

Vegeta's eyes were dark on hers, and she could feel her control tugging through her fingers, like taking a turn too fast on a wet road. Everything was slipping out from under her.

"I didn't think you had so little sense of self-preservation." Vegeta's voice was dry with snark and abraded with barely-banked need. He leaned into her again, his body crowding hers with a delicious heat and solidity. She found herself arching in unconscious response. Her unsteady breath caught the raw scent of sweat on his skin.

"I live dangerously, but I'm not stupid." With effort, Bulma pushed back on him where her hands were twisted in the front of his shirt; there was a moment when her efforts had no effect, before he remembered himself and leaned back obligingly. It was slightly less satisfying. She caught sight of his face again. The dark need and focus in his gaze made her feel naked. With a dizzied sense of leaping, she reached for his hand against the wall next to her and wrapped her fingers around it until he let her take it.

"What are you doing?" he said, and she could hear the nerves in his voice that he tried to hide: anger at the unknown.

She didn't respond. Instead, Bulma dragged him by the hand out of the gravity chamber and, amazingly, he let her.

* * *

Bulma had a suspicion that Saiyan endurance probably outstripped human.

Vegeta had finally fallen asleep, twisted up in her sheets, but she was fucking _sore_. Incredibly well-ravished, but sore. She'd actually slept lightly for about an hour before waking back up again, her eyes on the darkened sky outside her window. After a few minutes, she slid out of bed and padded quietly over to the bathroom. The lights inside blared to life, and she smacked them back down to a lower level with a pained hiss as her eyes stung. "Fucking stupid-" She caught sight of herself in the vanity mirror, her hair a total mess, but a satisfied smile lingering in the corners of her eyes.

She gave herself a thumbs up and whispered, "You go, girl."


	8. Win Without Fighting

**Win Without Fighting:** the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

* * *

For a while, they just went crazy.

Vegeta seemed to find it _hilarious_ to stalk her through the halls of Capsule Corporation like some kind of feline hunting its prey. She would be engrossed in her work only to feel the sudden slide of hands at her hips and a demanding heat against her neck, and then she couldn't really think about anything. On the other hand, he was _impossible_ to sneak up on, so it became her new favorite game to interrupt his day with small touches or coy looks or just bending over _way more than necessary_ to pick something up in front of him.

Long story short, she'd inevitably end up with her legs wrapped around his hips or bent over a console or something along similar lines, his hands in her hair, her mouth on his skin. Because, you know. S - ex.

So sue her. Vegeta was a - fast learner.

* * *

Aaaaand then the gravity chamber exploded.

Whatever anybody said, it really wasn't her fault. It was, in fact, the fault of the stupid, good-for-nothing, reckless, _dangerously idiotic_ user who had decided to just crank those settings up way past what he'd be _specifically told_ was the _highest allowable level_ the tech could support. She and her father had built a wonderful toy, and then gave it to a petulant child who threw it against the wall.

It was hard to explain the way her heart jumped into her throat when she realized the source of the explosion that suddenly rocked the entire compound. Booms of various sizes were not unheard of, but they still tended to be _emergencies_ , and she sprinted the distance with a sense of mounting dread. The sight of him, sprawled and torn and injured on the ground, had her chest clenching until she could set her fingers to his neck and find his pulse. She could feel the weight of Yamcha's gaze on her back and wondered why things like this couldn't happen when her ex _didn't_ happen to be over for a visit, because the way her hands were pressing gentle and unthinking to Vegeta's face was surprising even to her.

It's not that Bulma thought of herself as unfeeling, and she'd certainly cared deeply about Yamcha in the past, but she never in a million years would have expected to be the girl falling asleep at the bedside of some guy, no matter _how_ beat up and injured he was. (And she'd dealt with a whole fucking lot of beat up and injured men.) But that's where she was: sitting at a desk next to his bed, trying and failing to at least work while stuck was there, but mostly biting her nails and eyeing Vegeta's bandaged form as he slept.

It _was_ gratifying when he finally woke up, because then she got to start screaming.

"Are you a complete and total fucking _moron?!_ " Her hands twisted in her curled hair in an effort to keep herself from actually throttling him. He looked up at her, his gaze bleary but impassive, and offered neither rebuttal or agreement. For some reason, that just made her angrier. "Sorry, did you get hit by _falling debris_ and now can't parse anything I'm saying? Because what I'm saying is _why the fuck did you do that_ and _do you have a deathwish_. Because I can't come up with any other reason why you'd decide that training in _three hundred times Earth's gravity_ and then _shooting at yourself_ would be a bright fucking idea!"

Vegeta was silent for several moments, watching her with no indication that he felt the least bit humbled or humiliated. He finally turned his head to settle his gaze on the window instead and simply asked, "How long?"

"You were asleep for _two days_ , Vegeta! I can't believe-"

"How long until it can be _repaired_?" he snapped in interruption.

Bulma stared at him. She felt the strangest mix of total fury and utter fear. The first was easier to handle, so she went with that.

"Are you _kidding?!_ You're three-quarters of the way to _dead_ , and all you care about is _training_ and this _stupid gravity chamber_ and-"

"If you won't repair it, your father will."

The words hung in the air between them, heavy in the silence. Bulma felt something dangerous behind her eyes as terror gained ground against fury. She steeled herself, jaw setting and fingers curling into fists.

"Fine. Go ahead and kill yourself. See if I care."

* * *

Later, she sat on her bed with the heels of her hands pressed against her eyes and tried to convince herself that she, in fact, didn't.

* * *

Later still, she sat in her bathroom and stared at a white plastic stick until her life made sense again.

* * *

The rush and thrill of christening every surface in the compound had come to a crashing halt after the explosion, so Bulma felt strangely awkward approaching him again. She was just a little tipsy from a couple glasses of wine that she'd downed, because _fuck this fucking shit_.

"We need to talk." She'd caught him during his cooldown, having waited until the end of the day when interrupting him wasn't such an _ordeal_. She stood in the doorway of the (fucking repaired by her fucking father) gravity chamber, arms crossed, shoulders tense.

He wiped a towel across the back of his neck, mopping up sweat in a way that she refused to find distracting right now. "I doubt it."

"Hah hah you're so funny." Bulma stepped inside and keyed the door closed behind her. He glanced over, quirking a brow in a look of potential interest.

" _Not that_ ," she immediately snapped, her arms tightening as his expression twisted in annoyance.

"Tch. What do you want, then?" Vegeta glanced at the door behind her.

Bulma stood glaring at him a long moment, and he was just opening his mouth to no doubt snap impatiently at her when she finally said, " _I'm pregnant_."

Vegeta seemed to consider this, brows lifting in the mildest indication of surprise that to her seemed like a _pretty major underreaction_. And then, the barest hint of a smirk on his lips, he said, "You're welcome."

And that was it. Bulma literally could not even _process_ this reaction and was completely unable to even _start_ to formulate a response to it. She opened her mouth several times expecting words to come out. _Finally_ she managed to blurt out, " _What?!_ "

"Surely no one else on this miserable planet would be able to provide you with spawn fit to survive." Vegeta lifted a water bottle to gulp from.

Bulma could barely keep from shaking. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt this kind of overwhelming, oppressive fury. Her fingernails dug into her arms hard enough to leave scoring.

In a voice miraculous in its evenness, she said, "I take that to mean you have no opinion about what I do about it."

"I couldn't care less, woman."

She could barely make it out of the room and down the hall before she broke out in frustrated, furious tears. They only made her angrier.

* * *

She wanted to _talk_ to someone. She wanted to talk to _someone_ , but she just couldn't figure out who she could stomach opening up to about getting fucking _impregnated_ by the Prince of All Assholes. Both of her parents were dreamy and distractible in their own ways. She couldn't _imagine_ Chi-Chi swallowing her judgment on this one. And Yamcha - well. No.

So she sat down with her oldest and probably best friend who couldn't judge anyone even if he tried.

"Do you think I'd be a good mom?" she asked Goku. She'd taken the trip out to his little country home with Chi-Chi and Gohan, and Goku had snuck away to join her on the dock of the nearby stream. Their bare feet dangled in the water.

"Of course you would, Bulma," Goku replied, his smile immediately warming on her. "I bet you'd be a great mom. And I bet you'd have a super smart kid, too. You could invent things together!"

She laughed, just a touch rueful as she looked down at the water. "Maybe," she said. "I might - I don't know. I have a big choice to make, I guess."

Goku blinked those large, innocent eyes at her. She caught a flash of some awkward epiphany in his expression out of the corner of her eye, but by the time she looked back over at him he was looking _excessively_ nonchalant.

"Are you gonna be a mom, Bulma?" he asked.

Her smile twisted. "That's the question, I guess. I don't have to be. I have a lot of reasons to say no." She tipped her head. "I have some reasons I could say yes, too."

Goku nodded, his gaze solemn. His brow furrowed as he concentrated on figuring out a helpful answer, and eventually came up with: "Which reasons feel better?"

Bulma huffed a laugh. "I don't even know, Son. Kinda why it's a hard decision. On the one hand, I think about having a baby and I can - kind of picture it. I like the idea of a kid growing up in my lab and helping with experiments like I did with my dad. On the other hand - they wouldn't have _their_ dad, because he's not even interested, and is that fair? I mean, if the decision's mine, is that like choosing an absent, disinterested father for them? It's definitely choosing a nonexistent partner in parenting for _me_."

"Oh." Goku's brow furrowed even deeper. Then, all at once, he lightened. "It's okay, Bulma. Cause whatever decision you make, it'll be the right one. You're the smartest person I know."

Bulma felt something dumb and obnoxious pricking at her eyes, so she just leaned over and set her head on Goku's shoulder and let him loop an around her. He gave her a careful squeeze and ignored the handful of sniffles he could no doubt hear.

* * *

Vegeta may not have been interested, but Bulma wasn't going to let that deter her from informing him of her decision. Let him fuck off if he wanted to; she didn't even care anymore.

Except the gravity chamber was gone. More accurately, the _spaceship_ that _housed_ the gravity chamber was gone. Missing. Disappeared.

And Vegeta with it.

* * *

Months later, sweaty and disgusting and fucking _exhausted_ , Bulma opened her arms to hold her son for the first time. She looked down at his tiny, perfect face and pressed a finger to one impossibly soft cheek.

"Hi," she whispered to her son. "Hi there. I'm your mom."

His eyes were open, clear and blue, but he couldn't focus on her yet. She didn't mind. Doctors and nurses and her parents and everyone else bustled around her, but she was in a quiet oasis of relief.

"I'm gonna promise you one thing, okay?" She trailed a finger down his tiny little baby face. " _I'll_ always be there. It won't even matter that he's gone. Because you?"

She hugged him in close, leaning in so she was nose to nose with her tiny son. "You are gonna be fucking perfect, Trunks."

Trunks lifted one tiny hand and touched it to her cheek.


End file.
